The Gold Bat by P. G. Wodehouse (novels for students .TXT) 📗

four-thirty to five that afternoon in the prescribed manner.  A suggestion on his part at five sharp that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go and have some tea was not favourably received by the enthusiastic three-quarter, who proposed to devote what time remained before lock-up to practising drop-kicking.  It was a painful alternative that faced M’Todd.  His allegiance to Barry demanded that he should consent to the scheme.  On the other hand, his allegiance to afternoon tea—­equally strong—­called him back to the house, where there was cake, and also muffins.  In the end the question was solved by the appearance of Drummond, of Seymour’s, garbed in football things, and also anxious to practise drop-kicking.  So M’Todd was dismissed to his tea with opprobrious epithets, and Barry and Drummond settled down to a little serious and scientific work.

Making allowances for the inevitable attack of nerves that attends a first appearance in higher football circles than one is accustomed to, Barry did well against the scratch team—­certainly far better than Rand-Brown had done.  His smallness was, of course, against him, and, on the only occasion on which he really got away, Paget overtook him and brought him down.  But then Paget was exceptionally fast.  In the two most important branches of the game, the taking of passes and tackling, Barry did well.  As far as pluck went he had enough for two, and when the whistle blew for no-side he had not let Paget through once, and Trevor felt that his inclusion in the team had been justified.  There was another scratch game on the Saturday.  Barry played in it, and did much better.  Paget had gone away by an early train, and the man he had to mark now was one of the masters, who had been good in his time, but was getting a trifle old for football.  Barry scored twice, and on one occasion, by passing back to Trevor after the manner of Paget, enabled the captain to run in.  And Trevor, like the captain in Billy Taylor, “werry much approved of what he’d done.”  Barry began to be regarded in the school as a regular member of the fifteen.  The first of the fixture-card matches, versus the Town, was due on the following Saturday, and it was generally expected that he would play.  M’Todd’s devotion increased every day.  He even went to the length of taking long runs with him.  And if there was one thing in the world that M’Todd loathed, it was a long run.

On the Thursday before the match against the Town, Clowes came chuckling to Trevor’s study after preparation, and asked him if he had heard the latest.

“Have you ever heard of the League?” he said.

Trevor pondered.

“I don’t think so,” he replied.

“How long have you been at the school?”

“Let’s see.  It’ll be five years at the end of the summer term.”

“Ah, then you wouldn’t remember.  I’ve been here a couple of terms longer than you, and the row about the League was in my first term.”

“What was the row?”

“Oh, only some chaps formed a sort of secret society in the place.  Kind of Vehmgericht, you know.  If they got their knife into any one, he usually got beans, and could never find out where they came from.  At first, as a matter of fact, the thing was quite a philanthropical concern.  There used to be a good deal of bullying in the place then—­at least, in some of the houses—­and, as the prefects couldn’t or wouldn’t stop it, some fellows started this League.”

“Did it work?”

“Work!  By Jove, I should think it did.  Chaps who previously couldn’t get through the day without making some wretched kid’s life not worth living used to go about as nervous as cats, looking over their shoulders every other second.  There was one man in particular, a chap called Leigh.  He was hauled out of bed one night, blindfolded, and ducked in a cold bath.  He was in the School House.”

“Why did the League bust up?”

“Well, partly because the fellows left, but chiefly because they didn’t stick to the philanthropist idea.  If anybody did anything they didn’t like, they used to go for him.  At last they put their foot into it badly.  A chap called Robinson—­in this house by the way—­offended them in some way, and one morning he was found tied up in the bath, up to his neck in cold water.  Apparently he’d been there about an hour.  He got pneumonia, and almost died, and then the authorities began to get going.  Robinson thought he had recognised the voice of one of the chaps—­I forget his name.  The chap was had up by the Old Man, and gave the show away entirely.  About a dozen fellows were sacked, clean off the reel.  Since then the thing has been dropped.”

“But what about it?  What were you going to say when you came in?”

“Why, it’s been revived!”

“Rot!”

“It’s a fact.  Do you know Mill, a prefect, in Seymour’s?”

“Only by sight.”

“I met him just now.  He’s in a raving condition.  His study’s been wrecked.  You never saw such a sight.  Everything upside down or smashed.  He has been showing me the ruins.”

“I believe Mill is awfully barred in Seymour’s,” said Trevor.  “Anybody might have ragged his study.”

“That’s just what I thought.  He’s just the sort of man the League used to go for.”

“That doesn’t prove that it’s been revived, all the same,” objected Trevor.

“No, friend; but this does.  Mill found it tied to a chair.”

It was a small card.  It looked like an ordinary visiting card.  On it, in neat print, were the words, “With the compliments of the League”.

“That’s exactly the same sort of card as they used to use,” said Clowes.  “I’ve seen some of them.  What do you think of that?”

“I think whoever has started the thing is a pretty average-sized idiot.  He’s bound to get caught some time or other, and then out he goes.  The Old Man wouldn’t think twice about sacking a chap of that sort.”

“A chap of that sort,” said Clowes, “will take jolly good care he isn’t caught.  But it’s rather sport, isn’t it?”

And he went off to his study.

Next day there was further evidence that the League was an actual going concern.  When Trevor came down to breakfast, he found a letter by his plate.  It was printed, as the card had been.  It was signed “The President of the League.”  And the purport of it was that the League did not wish Barry to continue to play for the first fifteen.

V MILL RECEIVES VISITORS

Trevor’s first idea was that somebody had sent the letter for a joke,—­Clowes for choice.

He sounded him on the subject after breakfast.

“Did you send me that letter?” he inquired, when Clowes came into his study to borrow a Sportsman.

“What letter?  Did you send the team for tomorrow up to the sporter?  I wonder what sort of a lot the Town are bringing.”

“About not giving Barry his footer colours?”

Clowes was reading the paper.

“Giving whom?” he asked.

“Barry.  Can’t you listen?”

“Giving him what?”

“Footer colours.”

“What about them?”

Trevor sprang at the paper, and tore it away from him.  After which he sat on the fragments.

“Did you send me a letter about not giving Barry his footer colours?”

Clowes surveyed him with the air of a nurse to whom the family baby has just said some more than usually good thing.

“Don’t stop,” he said, “I could listen all day.”

Trevor felt in his pocket for the note, and flung it at him.  Clowes picked it up, and read it gravely.

“What are footer colours?” he asked.

“Well,” said Trevor, “it’s a pretty rotten sort of joke, whoever sent it.  You haven’t said yet whether you did or not.”

“What earthly reason should I have for sending it?  And I think you’re making a mistake if you think this is meant as a joke.”

“You don’t really believe this League rot?”

“You didn’t see Mill’s study ‘after treatment’.  I did.  Anyhow, how do you account for the card I showed you?”

“But that sort of thing doesn’t happen at school.”

“Well, it has happened, you see.”

“Who do you think did send the letter, then?”

“The President of the League.”

“And who the dickens is the President of the League when he’s at home?”

“If I knew that, I should tell Mill, and earn his blessing.  Not that I want it.”

“Then, I suppose,” snorted Trevor, “you’d suggest that on the strength of this letter I’d better leave Barry out of the team?”

“Satirically in brackets,” commented Clowes.

“It’s no good your jumping on me,” he added.  “I’ve done nothing.  All I suggest is that you’d better keep more or less of a look-out.  If this League’s anything like the old one, you’ll find they’ve all sorts of ways of getting at people they don’t love.  I shouldn’t like to come down for a bath some morning, and find you already in possession, tied up like Robinson.  When they found Robinson, he was quite blue both as to the face and speech.  He didn’t speak very clearly, but what one could catch was well worth hearing.  I should advise you to sleep with a loaded revolver under your pillow.”

“The first thing I shall do is find out who wrote this letter.”

“I should,” said Clowes, encouragingly.  “Keep moving.”

In Seymour’s house the Mill’s study incident formed the only theme of conversation that morning.  Previously the sudden elevation to the first fifteen of Barry, who was popular in the house, at the expense of Rand-Brown, who was unpopular, had given Seymour’s something to talk about.  But the ragging of the study put this topic entirely in the shade.  The study was still on view in almost its original condition of disorder, and all day comparative strangers flocked to see Mill in his den, in order to inspect things.  Mill was a youth with few friends, and it is probable that more of his fellow-Seymourites crossed the threshold of his study on the day after the occurrence than had visited him in the entire course of his school career.  Brown would come in to borrow a knife, would sweep the room with one comprehensive glance, and depart, to be followed at brief intervals by Smith, Robinson, and Jones, who came respectively to learn the right time, to borrow a book, and to ask him if he had seen a pencil anywhere.  Towards the end of the day, Mill would seem to have wearied somewhat of the proceedings, as was proved when Master Thomas Renford, aged fourteen (who fagged for Milton, the head of the house), burst in on the thin pretence that he had mistaken the study for that of his rightful master, and gave vent to a prolonged whistle of surprise and satisfaction at the sight of the ruins.  On that occasion, the incensed owner of the dismantled study, taking a mean advantage of the fact that he was a prefect, and so entitled to wield the rod, produced a handy swagger-stick from an adjacent corner, and, inviting Master Renford to bend over, gave him six of the best to remember him by.  Which ceremony being concluded, he kicked him out into the passage, and Renford went down to the junior day-room to tell his friend Harvey about it.

“Gave me six, the cad,” said he, “just because I had a look at his beastly study.  Why shouldn’t I look at his study if I like?  I’ve a jolly good mind to go up and have another squint.”

Harvey warmly approved the scheme.

“No, I don’t think I will,” said Renford with a yawn.  “It’s such a fag going upstairs.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Harvey.

“And he’s such a beast, too.”

“Yes, isn’t he?” said Harvey.

“I’m jolly glad his study has been ragged,” continued the vindictive Renford.

“It’s jolly exciting, isn’t it?” added Harvey.  “And I thought this term was going to be slow.  The Easter term generally is.”

This remark seemed to suggest a train of thought to Renford, who made the following cryptic observation.  “Have you seen them today?”

To the ordinary person the words would have conveyed little meaning.  To Harvey they appeared to teem with import.

“Yes,” he said, “I saw them early this morning.”

“Were they all right?”

“Yes.  Splendid.”

“Good,” said Renford.

Barry’s friend Drummond was one of those who had visited the scene of the disaster early, before Mill’s energetic hand had repaired the damage done, and his narrative was consequently in some demand.

“The place was in a frightful muck,” he said.  “Everything smashed except the table; and ink all over the place.  Whoever did it must have been fairly sick with him, or he’d never have taken the trouble to do it so thoroughly.  Made a fair old hash of things, didn’t he, Bertie?”

“Bertie” was the form in which the school elected to serve up the name of De Bertini.  Raoul de Bertini was a French boy who had come to Wrykyn in the previous term.  Drummond’s father had met his father in Paris, and Drummond was supposed to be looking after Bertie.  They shared a study together.  Bertie could not speak much English, and what he did speak was, like Mill’s furniture, badly broken.

“Pardon?” he said.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Drummond, “it wasn’t anything important.  I was only appealing to you for corroborative detail to give artistic verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative.”

Bertie grinned politely.  He always grinned when he was not quite equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation.  As a consequence of which, he was generally, like Mrs Fezziwig, one vast, substantial smile.

“I never liked Mill much,” said Barry, “but